Vex’d reprise the ole faithful Doctor Alimantado ‘gunman’ sample which dominated every shoe shop in south london all 1997 as I recall, courtesy of the chartbound, first wave, proto-uk garage of 187 Lockdown. For their debut wax on the Mu, following up two absolute killers on bristol’s massive Subtext imprint was always gonna be an almighty task, but we reckon they’ve just about managed it. ‘Gunman’ has nothing to do with 187 lockdown, more

Having once drum and bass dismissed as 'digital jazz rock' and then never giving it that much attention anymore, I must say that John B & Exile's 'Broken Language' is quite nice. Both sides are quite hardcore, almost industrial music, but with drum and bass meeting gabber-like rhythms. Exile's solo b-side is even a bit more experimental than the a-side and I must say if more dnb was like this, I would certainly be investigating this more and more. Two strong piece pumping loads of energy and adrenalin around.

More junglist posturing from those folk at Planet Mu – this time coming correct with a fierce two-tracker from John B (Beta/Prototype/Metalheadz) and collaborator Tim Exile (Moving Shadow/Frequency/Ram/Beta). “Broken Language” was originally created for John’s ‘in:transit’ album, here handed over to Exile for a proper rough-ass mangled edit – in accordance with Mu’s hardcore trajectory, complete with a gabba crescendo, phased and more

And so Planet Mu step into the Grime arena with the debut full-length from scene veteran Mark One. With a spate of releases for all the right labels : Soulja, Tempa, Texture, Southside, Immunity, his own Contagious imprint and, most recently, the notorious Grime compilation on Rephlex – Mark fuses a dirty low-end scrape and tumble with a ghetto mentality – shards of Hip Hop, R & B, Garage, 2-step and even electro stainin his template in more